Is it possible to change the stoplevel?

 

Is it possible to edit the stoplevel of any symbol to your own chosen value?

There are plenty of articles discussing how to alter the spread values, but I can not find an answer for how to alter the stoplevel values.

I am assuming that the answer is "no", but it is still worth asking.

(I know that the stoplevel value is set when you logon to a broker's server. I think that it is saved in the symbols.raw file. I can not find a broker with the stoplevel I need, and I'm not skilled enough to be able to alter the symbols.raw file myself).

I found this article discussing how to alter the symbols.sel file: http://mechanicalforex.com/2010/11/changing-the-spread-in-the-mt4-strategy-tester-my-spreadchanger-program-solves-the-problem.html

Surely after working for about two days using Delphi’s read and write block functions for binary files I was finally able to get a good idea of how the formatting of the symbol.sel file works.

I also found this article discussing the location of the stoplevel info in the symbols.raw file: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=337190

symbols.raw.

The following are the offsets in hexadecimal from the start of the appropriate symbol description that have been determined so far :

swap values - 8 byte doubles - 0x0690
stop level - 1 byte (possibly larger) - 0x06c0
contract size - 8 byte double - 0x06a8


Is there anyone who has managed to alter their stoplevels, or can point me in the right direction?

 
Is it possible to change the stoplevel? No. Unless you keep trying to figure out the format of the binary file. Otherwise, the way I went around large stop-levels was just using OrderClose(). Also, usually a real-ECN type broker would have smaller||zero stop-levels so try them if you haven't already.  
 

Thanks. That is what I expected. (I should probably clarify that I am only trying to alter the values as far as backtests go, obviously).

I thought about just using OrderSend/Close(), but then there is a different amount of slippage to account for as opposed to using pending orders and stoplosses/takeprofits. Although now you mention it, I suppose that such slippage would not be a problem just in the actual backtesting.

In this case I'm actually trying to alter the stoplevel TO zero. I have found MT5 servers with stoplevel at zero, but not any MT4 ones yet - but I shall keep looking (they don't seem to like creating new demo accounts at weekends). I think that is likely to be the best option, thanks.

 

Yeah obviously this is for strategy-tester. The tester has no slippage. In real-life, having sl and tp orders are no-guarantees against slippage. <--This is a common mis-conception.

(Pending | Stoploss | TakeProfit) Orders [ in some cases ] can work un_realistically within the strategy tester. Example would be weekend gaps. If you place a stoploss@150 and price falls from 200 down to 100 during the weekend, the tester will close the order@150. This does-not happen in real-life because the broker will not close your position until the market opens. <--Allot of false systems are built around pending orders.